WASI ejects press from meeting

Frontiersman staff

WASILLA — New signs on the Wasilla Senior Center wall declaring the center has the right to refuse service to anyone were put to use Thursday morning during a board of directors meeting when Frontiersman staff were deemed “trespassers” and ejected from a Wasilla Area Seniors Inc. board meeting.

Frontiersman Managing Editor Heather Resz and reporter K.T. McKee were dubbed hostile by WASI Executive Director Sondra Kaplan when she objected to Resz taking pictures of Kaplan’s husband Chuck, a WASI member, before the meeting started.

When Kaplan confronted Resz and asked her to stop taking pictures of WASI members, Resz argued that since the public was invited to the regularly scheduled board meeting, she had the right to take photographs as a member of the press.

McKee had attended several WASI meetings prior to Thursday and always was permitted to shoot photos during those meetings. WASI Marketing Director Diana Straub also took pictures during a recent board meeting.

Kaplan told Resz Thursday that WASI is actually a private organization, the boardroom was private property and, therefore, not subject by the state’s open meetings guidelines.

During a debate between Kaplan and Resz over whether WASI is, indeed, a private entity that could close its doors to the media, Kaplan attempted to block Resz’s camera with a file folder and in the process ended up mashing the red folder against the camera, causing it to bend Resz’s glasses and bruise her nose.

“You just assaulted me,” Resz told Kaplan as Kaplan continued to struggle with her to put the camera down.

WASI member Lois Wier, who happened to be sitting nearby, asked Resz if she wanted her to call 911 and Resz told her she did.

“It’s my job to protect the members, regardless of who you think you are,” Kaplan told Resz.

Moments later, a Wasilla police officer arrived to talk to Resz and Kaplan about the incident outside the boardroom as the board prepared to begin the meeting.

WASI Board President Mary Sears then began the meeting with a prayer that the meeting would be a peaceful one.

And it was, comparatively.

Member Anne Kilkenny gave a tearful apology to Kaplan, her husband and the board for past statements she’d made about them that ended up in the newspaper.

“Mistakes have been made and I have made some of them,” Kilkenny said, explaining accusations that Kaplan deliberately falsified WASI bylaws were incorrect. “WASI and Mat-Su Elder Watch members found problems with those bylaws which we called to the attention of the board at their meeting of Feb. 10, 2011. Those bylaws have been retracted. We were right: they were false. But they were NOT falsified. There is a huge, huge difference. They had errors in them, but I am now of the opinion that those errors were not the result of an attempt to pull a fast one on the members, as I had thought and claimed.”

Kilkenny said she owed an apology to Kaplan for ascribing evil motives to her. She had previously compared Kaplan to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and those working for her were Kaplan’s “goons.”

“I also owe Ms. Kaplan’s husband and friends an apology, too, because when someone you love and respect is attacked, especially when the attack is unfair, you get hurt, too,” Kilkenny said.

Although Kaplan had not returned to the meeting at that point, her husband and the board accepted Kilkenny’s apology before moving on to other business.

During board reports, it was announced that Wasilla City Councilwoman Colleen Sullivan-Leonard has introduced an ordinance for Monday’s council meeting to amend the city’s fiscal year 2011 budget by appropriating $34,800 for the WASI nutrition service program.

The ordinance will be up for public hearing at the council’s April 11 meeting.

Mitchell encouraged members to attend the council meetings to encourage passage of the ordinance.

This is WASI’s second attempt in recent months to gain assistance from the city. The council voted 3-2 in December against granting WASI $36,000 for its food program. Council members Dianne Woodruff, Taffina Katkus and Steve Menard expressed frustration over member complaints and a lack of information provided to the council by WASI to justify the assistance.

Woodruff said Thursday she is even more perplexed now about WASI’s need for the money after the board reported the nutrition program is actually $49,000 ahead and recent staff cuts are helping save $9,000 per month.

“They’re saying they’re a private organization and don’t have to abide by the open meetings law, yet they want public funds,” Woodruff said, adding she recently donated $350 of her leftover campaign funds to WASI. “I have told the board I would love to help them get more funding, but Sondra is not making it easy. The attitude issues need to go away and then we can move forward.”